 Good decision making for managers is important to build trust, a reputation for competence and of course to progress your career. The decisions made by managers and leaders can quite literally make or break projects, careers and businesses. As a result consistent good decision making at work really does matter and of course everyone does make some poor decisions. The important thing is that the good decisions we make outweigh the poorer ones. To help increase the quality of the decisions that you make I want to share a really useful six step decision making process with you. You can use this decision making process for any decision making that you need to do. For the simple decisions use the steps that make sense. For the more complicated decisions I would suggest you use each step. And at the end of the video I share tips on how to ensure that your decisions are put into action so you and the business get the benefits of the work that you put into the decision making process. My name is Jess Coles and I've had a 25 year management career in innocent drinks, fosters, EY, peer consulting and many others. A large part of my career has been spent understanding problems and either taking the decisions myself or helping others take decisions to solve those problems and improve the situation. We all make a lot of decisions each day. Consistently making more good decisions than bad is not necessarily easy. I've used this framework to approach decision making, large and small for years and I know how well it works. And if you're new to this channel Enhance.training provides online business courses to help you improve personal performance and that of your team and business. And if you like this video please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. So let's start with the first step to good decision making for managers and that is to understand the problem. Time and time again I've seen managers and teams jump into solution mode without really understanding the problem or only having a partial picture of the problem. The details often do come back to bite you if you don't pay attention. So don't take the problem at face value, dig into the detail. I'm sure you've had the experience of going to an experienced manager with a solution that you think will work well only for them to ask you a ton of questions, uncover some important insights that you have not thought through which in turn changes the proposed solution. This happened to me in my early years before I spent time understanding the problem. So keep asking why the problem is happening until you get to an answer that makes sense and if possible is supported by the data available to you as well. I want to share a quick story to illustrate the importance of understanding the problem. I worked with a small retailer that made lots of amazing cakes and treats, 500 plus in fact. The management team wanted to increase profitability and believed that they should further increase innovation to keep their customers happy, keep them returning to their stores and therefore increase sales. When I looked at the volumes and the margins for each product I discovered that only 120 of the 500 products made money. The newer products typically had low volumes and were loss-making. Too much innovation was part of the profitability problem, not the solution. The second step in a good decision-making process is to define the goal of the decision. What needs to be achieved from the decision that you make? What objective needs to be reached? And what are the conditions that the decision needs to satisfy? Back to the cake retailer example, the outcome they wanted was greater profitability without taking big investment risks. The goal of the decision was to choose one or more actions in our control that would give us the best and safest opportunity to increase overall profitability. In the retailer's case, reducing the unprofitable product range and the level of new product event innovation reduced complexity and removed cost. These actions reduced cost while creating greater focus on selling popular current products, thus maintaining revenue and increasing profits. So be specific with your goal. Always be aware of the constraints or limitations that are being imposed by others or that you choose to impose yourself. And then challenge these constraints. Check if they are really needed. Many constraints come from a set way of thinking or tradition or having done it before for many years or being applied for any other number of reasons. Make sure you question why any constraints are being imposed, otherwise you'll unnecessarily limit your decision making options. The third step to good decision making for managers is to explore your options. Just the process of creating options, thinking through the options and then comparing one against the other will ensure that you look at the problem from different angles and probably go into a lot more detail. Every business decision involves some degree of risk. Use a structured approach to consider questions like how can the option be implemented and how easy is it to do so? What is the likelihood that everything will go as planned and therefore we'll reach the outcome needed? What would need to happen for the option to fail? What resources are needed? Does the option fit within all the key constraints? And what time frames are needed for each option? Go through all the positive and negative possibilities for each of your options. During the decision making process you need to weigh out the pros and cons and risks of each option you develop as well as the ease of implementation. The fourth step to good decision making as a manager is to decide what is right. In nearly all decisions making there is a compromise. You might have to compromise because you only have so many resources, skills, time, cash etc. You might be tempted to compromise because you know gym in operations is going to hate the decision you want to make. So it is important to take a step back and work out what is the right decision, the right type of compromise that will move the business or team or situation for the most or in the best way. If you are making decisions and compromising based on personalities, departmental interests or politics rather than the best interests of the company or situation your decision will be based on what is acceptable rather than what is right. Which is likely to make your decision a lot less effective and useful to the situation. So be clear on what is the right decision to take. The fifth step to good decision making for managers is to build action into the decision. Without action and implementation a decision made is just a nice idea, your decision won't have any effect on the business. So when decision making and indeed choosing which option to use, the practical steps of how the decision will be implemented need to be considered. You know, plan, firstly who will have to know about the decision being made. Thirdly who will take responsibility for implementing the decision. Third what action or steps will need to be taken. Fourth will the decision made allow the person responsible to actually implement it, i.e. is the decision practical. Fifth do we have the skills and capability and capacity to implement the decision. And sixth what support and resources will they need. Think through each the practical steps needed to implement the decision before making it. This will save you lots of time and effort when trying to implement your decision and increase the effectiveness of your decision making. The sixth step to good decision making for managers is to communicate the decision. You know once you've made your decision the next step is to communicate it clearly to those implementing your decision and those likely to be affected by your decision. Clearly there's loads of ways that you can communicate your decision and you may need to communicate it several times particularly if changes of behaviour and process are required as part of the decision. And I've always found it useful to communicate the why the decision has been made as this provides context to those affected. When communicating decisions that require changes to be implemented or that are difficult or unpopular or the actions needed to implement them are quite complex then use several different communication methods and take time to persuade colleagues to take action and help implement the changes. If people don't understand or don't accept a decision they are unlikely to take action to implement a decision. Take the time to communicate your decision carefully and persuade those stakeholders to implement the decision. This leads me to the final step that I strongly recommend that you take which comes after your decision has been made. The seventh step if you like to good decision making as a manager is to follow up to ensure action is taken. If you've made a decision and you want this decision to be implemented you need to follow up to check that the implementation is actually happening. This is such an important step which many managers don't do or don't do enough of. You know we all have a long to do list, are under pressure from many different sources and don't have enough time in the day. It's really easy to go on to the next thing and put off the following up, don't. If you don't follow up the chances of your decision being implemented drop a lot. Ask the person who is responsible for implementing for progress updates and look at the reports and metrics that track progress. But most important of all go and have a look for yourself at what is happening at the cold face of the implementation. Ask questions, show visible interest, praise good work, ultimately make sure that you seem to be interested and through your actions communicate the implementation of this decision remains a priority for you. So in summary you have a six step decision making process or framework that you can put into action for any decision that you need to make, inside work or outside work. The more you practice going through these steps the more the process will become second nature. Remember good decision making as a manager is vital for you, your team and company as the decisions that you make have an increasingly greater impact the more senior you get. Enjoy good decision making at work. And as always if you like the video please give it a thumbs up and subscribe. Thanks for watching and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.